


Make Your Apartment Feel Bigger by Keeping Things Light

by easyforpauline



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern: No Powers, Banter, Discussion of Impact Play, Dom/sub, Domestic Fluff, Dry Humping, Face-Sitting (sort of?), Hair-pulling, Light Verbal Humiliation, Light objectification, M/M, Needles, Praise Kink, Service Submission, Trans Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-03
Updated: 2020-01-03
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:08:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22093102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/easyforpauline/pseuds/easyforpauline
Summary: Thing is, Steve’s not scared of needles; he can inject himself if he needs to. He just believes in putting Bucky to good use.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 26
Kudos: 169





	Make Your Apartment Feel Bigger by Keeping Things Light

The top of a carefully styled dark head appears in Steve’s peripheral, accompanied by the thump of knees hitting linoleum. Enough to pull him back into his body, where he registers that he’s nearly biting through his own tongue as it pokes out of his mouth. Not that the realization makes him stop. Maybe tasting iron would add some pizzazz to this project’s endless drudgery.

Instead of flitting his eyes to the time in the corner of the screen, he keeps his concentration. Focuses on getting the curved edge of this stupid fucking beer can vector _just_ so. When it’s time, Bucky will say. A good, compulsively punctual boy, Bucky likes to show up a couple minutes early. To already be down where he belongs. Left side, so Steve can place his free hand on the back of Bucky’s neck. A sweet pulse hammers beneath the heel of his hand. Tension leaks from Bucky with the touch. Like he’s their shitty air mattress, always deflating halfway through the night.

“Time,” Bucky says, and Steve says, “Uh-huh.” Zooming out—Are those colors right? They suddenly don’t _look_ right. Did he forget to turn f.lux off again?

“ _Steven_ ,” Bucky bites out, and Steve tightens his grip. A pleased hum vibrates in Bucky’s throat, irritation momentarily forgotten. So easy to please. If you’re the right person. If you’re really, really lucky, five feet tall, and ready to strangle Illustrator with your bare, arthritic hands.

Steve says, “Yeah, yeah,” stroking his thumb over the knob of _his_ right person’s neck. “Don’t be a brat about it.” He saves, even though he’s already saved at least three times since making the most recent change, and shuts the laptop lid.

“I’m just doing my job.”

“I know you are. Such a good, industrious little worker.” He kisses the top of Bucky’s head. Grimaces at the tacky styling wax against his lips, but doesn’t have the heart to bitch about it.

“I want a raise.”

“Take it up with the union.”

“The Union of Obedient Fuckdolls?”

“The Union of Very Helpful Husbands. So _crass_ , Buck. Who made you that way?” Bucky just glares, so Steve shakes his head with a laugh and says, “C’mon.” Reluctant as he is to stop holding onto Bucky’s warm, solid neck, 1. His back is killing him, and 2. They really do gotta get going; he can’t be stalling now if he wants to have fun stalling later.

He stands and stretches, arms to the sky, back cracking loud and satisfying as pulling a wishbone in half. He grunts, placing a hand to his lower back to reinforce the motion, and Bucky grunts too, mocking.

“Me caveman. Me Steve. Me refuse to use a chair with proper back support or even exhibit good posture—”

Steve smacks him upside the head. “How about we work on _your_ posture later, huh?”

“No complaints from me. Will it involve a ruler?”

“Sure. Maybe a yardstick. Maybe chain your hands to your neck.” They should invest in a posture collar, honestly. “Now who was in such a hurry a moment ago?” Another smack, this time to Bucky’s cheek. Not as hard as he can, more a symbolic gesture than anything. “Go on, puppy. Fetch.”

Bucky’s face is pink but his smile’s smug as he crawls off in the direction of the tackle box. For his part, Steve goes to wait in the bathroom, grabbing his charging phone from the kitchen counter on the way. He makes quick work of tugging off his jeans, tossing them carelessly into the tub, and rolling up the left leg of his boxers to indicate which thigh Bucky’s meant to use today. Not that it should be rocket science. A big bruise blooms old-blood-brown and infected-snot-green on his right thigh from testing out the new paddle on himself before going to town on Bucky’s ass. Punishment “for being the kind of pervert who buys _oat milk,_ ” he said as he rubbed the leather over Bucky’s thigh in warning.

“I thought perverts were _welcome_ in this household,” Bucky complained. His voice was a little muzzy, all the blood having rushed to his head with how Steve had him bent double over the couch back.

“They are. And we welcome them by beating their asses raw.”

It was hard to tell through the startled yelp, but Steve’s pretty sure Bucky responded, “Such generosity of spirit.”

Now, Steve pointedly does not welcome Bucky. Staring hard at a _Democracy Now_ column on his cracked phone screen, as though he’s taken in even half a word. The toilet lid’s uncomfortable cold against his bare legs, and goosepimpling his bruised and unbruised flesh. The light streaming through the parted curtains is at just the right angle to get in his eyes. His eyes have already beat themselves against enough screens today, like birds slamming cluelessly into crystalline skyscrapers.

And oh—The most handsome man in the world is crawling toward him with their Testosterone Tool Tacklebox hanging from the handle clenched precariously in his teeth. Harder on the teeth than any ball gag, Steve knows. A more uncomfortable burden than any weighted nipple clamps as it knocks against Bucky’s chin with every forward movement, as he struggles to keep his head up straight. And all for Steve.

For the third time, Steve attempts to read the word, “ceremony.” For the hundred and seventh time—so sue him that he keeps count—Bucky crawls over the threshold between the kitchen and bathroom, knees probably grateful for the plushy purple bathmat dominating the postage-stamp floor, and places the T.T.T. beside him as he kneels up.

Eyes still trained on his screen, Steve, all casual-like, spreads his legs wider. Blocking Bucky from sliding out the TV dinner tray stashed between toilet and sink.

Bucky clears his throat. Steve raises an eyebrow, a silent, _Wanna try that again?_ If Bucky knows what’s good for him, he will, in fact, wanna.

“Steve. Sorry to interrupt—” Steve sighs heavily, weight of the world on his shoulders, and finally lets his eyes land where they’ve been dying to camp out.

The corner of Bucky’s mouth is twitching. His eyes are bright and narrow. Steve narrows his own. “Yes? Did you need something?”

“May I get to the tray, please?”

“Yeah? What do you need it for?”

“For you. To get everything ready for you. Please?”

“Yeah?” Steve gives up on the column, placing his phone on the toilet tank, and takes Bucky’s chin in his hand. “You wanna be a good boy and give me what I need?”

Bucky nods furiously. “Yes, please.”

Steve sighs again. “So needy. If you _must_.” He moves his leg.

Stamped all over with images of the Brady Bunch, the tray was an extremely unfortunate trashpick on Bucky’s part. Steve finds their eyes soulless and threatening. Bucky likes to hum the _Brady Bunch_ theme song, occasionally, as he works. Today, knee-walking up to the sink to wash his hands—Steve is a benevolent soul who, without comment, squirts soap into his expectant palms and turns on the tap while Bucky tests the limits of how far his arms can stretch—he does not hum.

He says, “You’re such a pain in my ass.”

“Thanks! I try.” Steve kicks gently at Bucky’s ass, and Bucky winces. “You still purple? Do you _actually_ want me to use a ruler on you later?”

“Um. You could use it on my hands.”

“True.” Steve turns off the tap and roughly towels Bucky’s hands dry. “Not like I’ll need to use them again for another week.” He presses kisses to their dried backs, with the light dusting of dark hair, the stray pen marks on the right one. “Doesn’t matter if I get them so red and sore you gotta wear gloves for days.”

“Bet they’d feel good if you got yourself off with ‘em.” He turns away; Steve waits until the last minute to let his hands go with him, but Bucky does have a job to do, actually. As annoying of him as that may be. Popping open the T.T.T. and laying everything out on the tray: alcohol wipes, Band-Aid, needle, T.

“Yeah?” Steve’s voice is at its gentlest. Gooey and warm like a just-baked brownie. Can’t help it, when Bucky’s got that focused crease between his brows. “You want me to grind off against you poor little welted, hot hands?”

“Jesus.” He rubs the alcohol wipe in a firm, wide circle over Steve’s unbruised thigh. Head ducked appealingly close to Steve’s crotch, he bites his lip and looks up through his lashes. “You _know_ I want that.”

“I don’t know shit.” Steve fists a lazy hand in Bucky’s hair, steering him to face up. To make eye contact proper. “You want something, you tell me.”

“I want it, I want it,” Bucky laughs. Maintains eye contact as he tosses one alcohol wipe in the trash and opens another.

“You want what?” With some reluctance, Steve releases him to continue getting this show on the road.

“Want—Um. For you to grind off against my poor little hot, welted hand.” His voice may falter, but his hands remain quick and steady as he cleans the vial’s lid, rips open the needle’s packaging. Bucky’s hands never shake or ache unless Steve makes them that way.

“And who’s gonna make them that way?”

“You, Steve. With a ruler.”

“Why?”

“Because—” Bucky pauses in tugging on the needle’s plunger. “Because it’s sexy as hell? Why the fuck else.”

“To work on your posture, dummy. Keep up with the program.”

Bucky flushes. He sits up just a little bit straighter. There we go: strategy already working. “Right. Of course.”

Steve grants him silence for this part. The pulling to the exact right line, tapping the bubbles out. Steve lazes back, content to have the shittiest posture in the room by miles. One arm snakes behind the faucet and the other elbow rests on the toilet tank beside his abandoned phone. Bucky’s grey eyes and little silver hoop earrings gleam in the light. The tag’s sticking out of the back of his shirt, and Steve makes a note to tuck it back in once Bucky’s not holding any sharps. His thighs are so fucking cold but soon the left will be warmed by Bucky’s big hand.

Outside, the creaking of a neighbor throwing open their window. In _this_ weather? Then Bucky’s on his knees before him, lips parted, holding up the needle like an offering. “May I?”

Steve smiles. Indulgent, he strokes a thumb over Bucky’s eyebrow. “You wanna stick it in me, Buck?”

“Yes, please.”

“Yeah?” Steve teases. “You wanna be my good boy and fill me up?”

Not even an aborted eye-roll. Bucky nods hard and earnest. “Please.”

“Well, if you want it that bad. Guess I should let my greedy boy take what he needs.” Steve moves his leg so his thigh’s more firmly supported by the toilet lid. _Relaxed_ being far from his natural state, he wills his muscles to go soft and easy, pliant beneath Bucky’s touch. Easier there, at least, than anywhere else on earth.

The hand not holding the needle lands on Steve’s thigh. Thumb and pointer fingers spread in a V, pulling the freckled skin taut. Bucky hovers the needle over the intended site. “Deep breath,” he murmurs, his own breath ghosting over alcohol-cooled flesh, and Steve grudgingly obeys.

Thing is, Steve’s not scared of needles. And with the amount of poking, prodding, general bloodletting he’s been subjected to over the past twenty-four years? Thank fucking God. But it’s different, getting stabbed by impersonal gloved hands in a sterile room far from home, versus breaking the barrier of his own body in his own little bathroom with its shitty water pressure and Keith Haring shower curtain. There’s something profane and stomach-curdling about it. It’s just _wrong_. And he can endure wrong, has endured plenty wrong, can clench his teeth and et cetera et cetera. But in Bucky’s hands, the profane turns—Not sacred. That would be silly and melodramatic.

Still, Bucky does look like an angel, backlit and intent, as he sinks the needle into Steve’s loosey-gooseyed muscle and depresses the plunger for what feels like forever, until forever ends. A dark red bead wells up in the needle’s wake, but Bucky’s quick with the Band-Aid. It’s printed with heart-eye emojis.

Steve becomes a heart-eye emoji himself as Bucky kisses the bruised thigh, directly parallel the spot he stuck on the other leg. Just like always: Always, Bucky does that; always, Steve’s a lovesick cartoon in response.

Bucky caps the needle, boxes everything up quickly. “All done. You’ve been a bearable patient.” He pokes his tongue in his cheek and grins. “You want a lollipop?”

“Mm. Thanks, nurse, but—” Steve leans forward and digs his fist into Bucky’s hair, yanking. A good-sized shout and fluttering eyelids are his reward—“was thinking more like a toy?”

“Yeah?” Steve tugs more insistently on his hair until Bucky’s shuffled back where he belongs, slotted between Steve’s spread legs.

“Yeah. That sounds about right to me. Maybe some kinda unionized obedient fuckdoll, if you’ve got one on hand.” Steve directs Bucky to bow his neck, to cock his head to the side a little—Steve’s not the Tetris expert here, but he’s determined to find the best way to do this.

“Well,” Bucky says, eyes on Steve’s even at this awkward angle, smile irrepressible even as he’s clearly trying hard to sound measured, considering, like maybe the jury’s out instead of totally stacked in Steve’s favor. “You were _such_ a good patient. I suppose you’ve earned it.”

“I don’t need to earn shit, Barnes. That’s your job.”

“And did I? Earn it?”

“Yeah.” He takes one of those very helpful, soon-to-hurt hands and pulls it close for a kiss. “You did a good job for me. Do good at it every time.” The tips of Bucky’s ears flame. Steve carefully lowers the hand. “Put your hands around my ankles. Squeeze hard if you can’t breathe. Got it?”

“Got it.” Bucky obeys.

“Good. Now just look pretty and let me use you.”

A shiver runs through Bucky. He sticks his tongue out, raising his eyebrows, a question. Steve shakes his head. “No fancy attachments.” He pats Bucky’s cheek. “Gonna use my toy as is. Just how it came outta the box.” Bucky puts his fancy pink attachment back in his mouth.

Steve winces as he thrusts a little further forward to meet Bucky’s mouth; pushing forward with his hips means pushing backward with his spine and the lid of the toilet tank hits him at the worst possible spot when he does so. Okay, so he’s not the masochist here or whatever, but he can power through and focus on Bucky’s beautiful, useful face, except—

Bucky squeezes his ankle. Steve scoffs. “My junk’s not even touching your face.”

“Yeah, it’s _your_ health in danger, bud. Look, can I stage-direct a second? Please?” And well, he did ask nice. Steve lets go of Bucky’s hair and waves a permissive hand. Leans back with his elbows on the tank, waiting to see what grand vision’s at play here.

Bucky pulls the towel off the back of the door—a green, fluffy recent indulgence—and folds it up into a pillow that he sets aside. Then he wraps his hands around Steve’s thighs, pulling gently, more the intimation of a concept than an order. “Slide down?”

Steve slides down until he’s flat on his back, ass hanging off the lid’s edge. His neck is bent at a weird angle against the tank, but Bucky takes care of that, sliding the folded towel into place.

“All right,” Steve says, feeling goofy with his ass and legs jutting so far into space, like his ankles might as well be in stirrups. But Bucky’s back to bowing his neck, cocking his head to the side, kneeling down as low as possible, making himself tiny, and jutting so far into space _does_ mean looking like he takes up a lot _more_ space than he does, so. Fine. “Everything you dreamed of?”

Bucky drops a little kiss to Steve’s knee. “And more.”

Dear god. The earnest look on his face, irresponsibly open as the neighbor’s window. Steve swallows hard. Clears his throat. “Then come here, fucktoy. Let me get myself off on your stupid face.”

“Whatever you say.” Without needing to be told, he fits his hands back around Steve’s ankles before kneeing in close, stopping with his face a scant half-inch from Steve’s junk. Steve curls one hand around the back of Bucky’s neck and laces the other into Bucky’s hair, which is sticking up by now with how much Steve’s hands have traveled in and out of it.

He has less leverage to grind in this position than he did sitting up, but he plants his feet, puts Bucky where he wants him, and makes do. It’s an artless thing. He humps Bucky’s face like it’s a pillow. Rubs himself against the line of Bucky’s jaw, his beloved dimpled chin. Shockwaves go through him with each firm press of some bit or other of Bucky to his dick. From the first, that rush of T to his system’s gotten him hot, rearing to go, even before it became intertwined with the image and touch of Bucky on his knees, being so good and helpful. Now?

Always, he _needs_ , and sometimes they don’t after; sometimes they’ve got places to be or they’ve both got colds, or just petting and complimenting and mocking Bucky’s enough to burn off the heat inside him.

But this is perfection, flattening a hand to the back of Bucky’s skull and grinding his whole face into Steve’s crotch, slack lips and jutting nose, hitting him just right. Bucky buzzes his lips and Steve arches, gasps, says, “Toys don’t. Move their mouths,” and pinches the back of Bucky’s neck hard, but apparently they do move their mouths sometimes, if they are very expensive, futuristic, and _evil_ , and when they do, it turns Steve into a telephone wire. Full up with noise rushing every direction, vibrating because a passel of pigeons has just departed from their perch on him, leaving him weightless—

The pleasure-pressure builds and builds, a solid creature filling his pelvis and wrapping around his spine like the twine wrapping the big heat pole in the corner so that, thank God, Bucky won’t burn himself on it if he moves a couple inches in the wrong direction. At the count of twenty, Steve lets Bucky up for air, returning to rocking lazily against his chin. “There we go,” Steve coos, drinking in Bucky’s slack mouth and half-lidded eyes, his long mothwing lashes, and the pink all over him from the combination of arousal and the slight roughness of Steve’s boxer briefs.

The feeling in Steve is--It's _good_ and it’s _warm_ and it’s _big_ but it’s not quite enough. Not specific enough. Steve switches to a one-handed hold on Bucky’s head to rub at his own nipple through the stretchy fabric of his t-shirt. In response, his lungs feel full, his face warm. Moving from side to side on his chest, he lights up, so now he’s a vibrating telephone wire _and_ the nearby streetlights popping on, and he says, “Gimme your hand, Buck.”

Bucky awkwardly reaches behind his own head to put a hand over the hand Steve has back there. He squeezes sweetly. Steve laughs. “Not like that. Fuckdolls aren’t for holding hands. They’re for _using._ Let me _use_ your hand one more time, sweetheart.”

“Oh.” Bucky’s eyes are wide. “How?”

“Make a fist. There we go. _So_ smart.” Steve pushes back, sitting up, so that there’s space on the lid between his legs. “Down,” he says to Bucky’s fist like it’s a dog. But to help it out, he grabs the wrist and lowers the fist where he wants it, right up against his crotch. “Good, now use your other hand to hold it in place. Right, grab the wrist. And don’t you dare let it move. Your hand’s just a sex toy for me right now. I’d duct tape it in place if I had the patience to get up.”

Bucky smiles at him, dopey, but also says, “How’s my hand a sex toy if _I’m_ a sex toy? It’s a sex toy attached to a sex toy? Like two dildos glued together?”

“Yes. Exactly. Like two, _silent, polite_ dildos glued together. Fuck off.”

“Or maybe like a butt plug glued to a string of anal beads,” Bucky muses.

“Open your mouth,” Steve says with a sigh, and when Bucky does, somehow managing to still be smiling with his eyebrows, Steve stuffs a toothbrush from the mug next to his head in there. “Close. Hold that there, please. Thank you.”

Bucky looks like he really wants to give Steve a thumbs up, but he’s being good and holding one hand in place with the other hand. Steve squeezes his thighs shut around that giant fist, pressing himself against the hard, flat surface of Bucky’s folded-in fingers, and grinds. His eyes fall shut. “Good,” he pants, after a long moment, after he can tell again that the feeling’s building inside him—Construction resumed. “Aren’t you _such_ a good butt plug glued to a string of anal beads.”

A choking noise from around the toothbrush. Steve opens his eyes long enough to wink at Bucky. “Yeah, yeah, and you’re a good boy and good fucktoy and husband and whatever the fuck else too. That what you wanted to hear?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“So high maintenance, huh, Buck? Gotta always be showering you with compliments or you just fall apart, poor boy.” A funny joke, like Bucky doesn’t always fall apart in the end, however nice or mean Steve’s been to him. Steve lifts both hands to his nipples, rolling and pinching at them gently, chest arching into his own touch. Between that and the unrelenting press of himself against Bucky’s fist, he’s close, so close, the feeling almost too big to fit inside him. “Sit up straight. I wanna kiss you.”

It’s not super pleasant, kissing around the intrusion of the toothbrush. Probably even less pleasant for Bucky. But Steve acts like it’s not there, biting and licking and sucking at Bucky’s lips, curious if he’ll forget himself and open his mouth to it, let the toothbrush fall out, need to be reprimanded—

Steve could fuck his throat with the toothbrush, make him clean the bathroom with the toothbrush, with his bruised ass in the air—Steve pinches one of his nipples harder now, rolls his hips, and yeah—

Too big to fit inside him now, the feeling rolls through him like a dust storm through a prairie and out his panting mouth, which goes slack against Bucky’s. One more roll of his hips and he’s jolted harder, closes his teeth to bite at Bucky’s jaw, and Bucky makes a satisfying high-pitched noise around the toothbrush, right in Steve’s ear.

All over in a whoosh. Steve ruts lazily against Bucky’s fist another moment longer, chasing aftershocks, but it’s just like cleaning up at the end of a party; the party’s over, even if a couple guests linger to help.

“Okay,” he says finally. “Yeah,” and he pulls the toothbrush out of Bucky’s mouth and kisses him properly this time, happy to be able to suck on his tongue. He can feel Bucky’s smile against him. He draws back, drinking in Bucky’s wild-eyed, flushed face. “Good.”

“Good. You good?”

“Oh, I’m exceptional.” He snorts. “You can move your hands now, you know. I’m done with them for a while.”

“I didn’t have permission!”

“Poor baby.” Steve pats him on the cheek. “Such a rough life, needing permission for every little thing.”

“Well I don’t _normally_ need permission to take a piss, but seeing as you’re kinda in the way right now—”

“Yeah, fine. Evict me from my comfortable chair here.” His back twinges as he stands. “Fuck.” He massages at his neck too.

“You have the goddamn self-preservation instincts of a _moth_ ,” Bucky says. “Toilet sex? Was that comfortable, Steve?”

“Don’t make it sound grosser than it is!”

“I’m being factual! We had sex on the toilet.”

“Take a fucking piss, Barnes,” Steve says, and stretches up to kiss him on the cheek, and to tuck his tag back into his shirt collar for him. “You earned it.”

**Author's Note:**

> For once this title is not from a TV show, and is instead from a far richer well of inspiration: a blog post on the CubeSmart website.


End file.
